German food retailer Edeka lands a viral marketing hit

Not everybody is tempted by German supermarket Edeka’s new viral hit to buy ‘supergeil’ cod or to have a bath in milk and cereal. However, the campaign, which launched in February, seems to be impacting buying behavior for some key purchase groups.

Germany’s largest supermarket chain, Edeka, created a YouTube video featuring a song in which its private brands are being referred to as ‘supergeil’ - which can mean both super-cool, or super-horny. German electro-pop musician and actor Friedrich Liechtenstein performed the song. The video quickly went viral, reaching over 8 million views so far, and even attracting an international fan base. Buzzfeed in the US called it “The Most Gloriously Entertaining Commercial You’ll See Today”

Unsurprisingly the campaign was most successful reaching younger people. Almost half of all German 18- 30 year olds who were aware of the Edeka brand, were aware of the Edeka advertising after ‘supergeil’ took off. This is an all-time high since the beginning of 2013 and during the course of the campaign this age group registered a higher ad awareness with Edeka than competitor Rewe or German discounters like Lidl or Aldi. Twentysomethings’ perception of Edeka also beat out the other German food retailers since the video started to take off, so successfully, about a month ago.
Young people change buying intention

The video was designed to promote Edeka’s private label brands, which the supermarket chain uses in order to compete with discounters. Still, consumers take buying at Lidl or Aldi increasingly more into consideration than buying at Rewe or Edek. The ‘Supergeil’ hasn’t been able to change this – at least not yet. Nevertheless there has been a positive effect on one target group - under 30-year-olds with a net household income of over 1500 Euros. In early March over 50 percent of them indicated they would rather buy at Edeka than Lidl, Aldi or Rewe.

What remains to be seen is whether the campaign has a long-term effect on consumers and whether Edeka will succeed in convincing other target groups into thinking the private brand is better than the discounter offerings. More recent TV spots with a clearly ‘less sexy’ approach can be seen as an attempt to do so.